


how to silence the voice

by supernatasha



Category: Hemlock Grove
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/F, POV Character of Color, POV Second Person, Series Spoilers, Triggers, Vivisection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 13:34:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1120448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supernatasha/pseuds/supernatasha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A character study of Clementine Chasseur.</p><p>God, watch over me as I fight the powers of evil.<br/>God has better things to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	how to silence the voice

The Greeks found their Olympians and Titans as flawed as their humans. Fighting over petty occurences, holding grudges about contrived slights.

Foolish. Arrogantly proud.

Icarus flew too high. Just like his Gods, he was filled to the brim with that peculiar flavor of conceit. Hubris. The Greek myths were full of it, of falling from grace rather gracelessly. Pride equated with height. When you think you do something because the world needs it, only to discover much later that you did it because you needed it.

Sometimes, you think, if Icarus had believed in your God, he would never have tried to reach the sky at all.

 

The Order is all you've ever known, all your brother and you have ever had. You used to pray that this year would finally be the one of your initiation. When your brother, older by two years, was tested and found pure enough to join, you had burned with jealousy.

In penance, you had given up talking for three weeks.

 

When they finally tell you it's time, you forget to pray.

That doesn't start until you're actually locked in the cell with her.

 

But this is the part they don't tell you: that there is a voice in the pit of your lungs telling you not to swing, not to slice through her skin and the soft pulsing arteries. To throw down your weapon and help the woman out, help her have the baby and watch new life come into this filthy hellhole of a world, trembling and blinking against harsh fluorescent lights.

The voice tells you there is no danger here, they maybe they'll learn to control it, that you should give her a chance.

This is the part you have to figure out on your own. 

How to silence the voice. 

 

When you get home, you're greeted by a layer of dust on every surface, empty closets, a letter left on the coffee table. 

Another girlfriend, gone. 

You close your eyes, pretend it doesn't matter, the ache in your chest and the pricking at your eyes. You dig through your pantry to find that one golden bottle of tequila, the one you swore up and down you got rid of when you went to your first AA meeting, and drink the night away. 

You never do end up reading her fucking note.

 

There's this rule, unspoken of course, that you don't think about them later. The men, the women, the unborn children. You don't tell anyone what they said to you, how they looked with tears filling their eyes, realization and horror as they realized what you meant to do. 

Of course you've never been good at following rules. 

 

The woman haunts every single one of your nightmares, and these days there are more of that than actual sleep.

In most, she is sharpening a bar of steel and the moon outside is fat and full, pregnant. When you look down at your blood-stained hands, they're covered in a layer of fur and you realize you're sitting on your haunches, waiting to be slaughtered.

 

No matter who you kill, or where you do it, or how they die, it's always the same woman in your dream.  
  
You wake with a monster hangover; everything throbs, too bright and too loud. Everything aches. Swallowing three aspirin dry, you check the messages on your phone.

That's the kind of thing Chasseur's do; that _you_ do. Pick yourself up and get the fuck over it.

Your phone tells you to go here, meet this person. It isn't just telling you. It's ordering you.

It is, after all, called the Order of the Dragon, not the Polite-but-Pressing-Request of the Order.  


"You're alone," the preist tells you and it sounds like a curse, like a burden to be carried on your shoulders. But there isn't much argument to be had there. He's right. "Alone means expendable."

He's still right.

This was the man who used to hear your confessions, had taught you the difference between a succubus and a siren, had sanctioned your initiation. Now he assigned you murders.

Your job – your duty – is in the town of Hemlock Grove, and it sounds like the kind of place you try to avoid even stopping at for gas, the kind that's populated by folks with hair the color of straw, folks who still give lesbians a wide berth, folks who've never dealt with anything like a mad supernatural creature before.

 

Even before you get there, before you rent a room in that cheap motel surrounded by the stink of sex, even before you lay your eyes on the first body, you already know you're falling apart.

_God, watch over me as I fight the powers of evil._

God has better things to do.

 

Why is it always the girls who die, are mauled by creatures and ripped apart, consumed? What is it about being in possession of two of the same chromosomes that condemns one to mutilation and desecration? Why are they the martyrs to the unbridled hunger and lust of the things that go bump in the dark?

You wish you had an answer, but you think you already know.

After all, whatever it is that hooks its talons into those girls has hooked its talons into you as well.

Sometimes you pray it won't let go.

  
  
The Romani boy. Peter. You watch him, watch his gold tinged eyes, that messy mop of hair, the way his smile tightens around the edges like he wants to snarl instead. 

He's just a kid. A stupid kid born with the wrong blood, but a kid all the same. 

There's something about him that you catch sometimes, when he looks up at the sky, as he stops midwalk and stares down at his feet, with every lingering touch of his fingertips against solid surfaces. You recognize it. You've seen it before; you've been it before. The disjointed wanderings of one condemned and realizing this was the last time they would breathe free air, would walk unshackled, would feel.

You wonder if the prison he's dreaming of is real with metal bars, or if it's the suit of his human flesh, or if it's something trapping and suffocating him inside the gray matter of the brain.

Like yours.

It doesn't matter. A job is a job is a job.

You still find yourself at the gas station paying for cheap vodka you'll force down and vomit back up later. On a scale of one to ten, you're too drunk to fucking count, but you're wrecked and screeching into a heap of ashes by the highway.

 

You go to Destiny Rumancek.

"You're alone," she whispers. It isn't a curse when she says it. It rolls off her tongue, almost a compliment – a loaded one perhaps, but one nonetheless. She doesn't make it seem like you're expendable, that you have no one to lose. Moving closer, she adds, "Lonely doesn't need to be fixed, but it doesn't need to be embraced either."

There is this to be said of Destiny: she doesn't tease.

Her fingers are cold inside you, but her lips are warm on your flesh, raising goosebumps. You come twice under her touch, back arching, the rhythmic clenching of your walls beyond control, fingers grasping the cotton sheets. Waves of hedonism drown out any doubts that have been gnawing at you, and the only clear voice isn't that of God, but that of iridescent pleasure coursing through your veins.

You shine for those few seconds, as bright as any angel falling throgh the atmosphere and dripping wax from torn wings, burning up like that boy who thought he could fly to the sun.

She doesn't ask for anything in return and this too, you observe with some measure of bitterness, irks you.

You leave money on the table with the intent purpose of making her feel cheap.

 

It makes you feel cheap, too.

 

There's scotch, then there's rum, then there's whiskey, then there's another pretty bottle curled up under your fingers and glistening under light that you can't make out the letters of. The liquor turns into blood in your mouth, heavy and metallic, choking until you can't breathe. Then there's vomit coming up your throat and burning its way past your teeth into the porcelain lid of the cheap motel toilet.

Blood washes out the taste of Destiny from your tongue.

You'll fucking take it.

You wish you had wings beating against your shoulder blades.

You think, again, of Icarus. Daedalus had warned him, had told him repeatedly of the dangers of flying too high, but did anyone else know what the falling was actually like? Did the Gods resting on their perch on Olympus know? Did the angels of her own God know? That feeling of weightlessness as wind rushes past your ears and the briny smell of the sea comes closer?  


Was Icarus the only human who had felt flying _and_ falling?

 

Icarus, it is an effort to remind yourself, isn't actually real.

 

Welcome to the real world, sweetheart. Shut down your moral centers, shut down your amygdala, embrace that tiny speck of you that wants blood until it is the only thing left in your scrambled up little brain. This is what your ancestors have left for you, have bequeathed upon you. The desire for warm crimson blood. Let it pulse. Let it eat away at any words and feelings and expressions until the urge to kill is the only thing left.

Your lips tremble when you get down on your knees to pray.

God doesn't answer, never does. It's okay. You're used to it, you think.

Don't ask yourself, don't ask yourself. Don't ask yourself.

But you do ask.

Who are the real animals?

Who are the real monsters?

 

Johann Pryce is quite unlike Destiny. He is all angles, he is sharp like a blade that will cut your fingers if you try to touch, he is hard. He likes you, you can tell. Not that it'll really matter, but for what it's worth, you like him too. Pryce might even be willing to help you with this nasty business with the girls dying.

But he's leashed like a dog, cuffed to Olivia Godfrey.

 

You tell yourself it's duty, it's the right thing to do, when you let the poison run through his wolf. The _upir_ pleads you, begs for his friends life. If you ask, would he look you in the eye and tell you to forget everything about your life? You wonder if it would work. If he could make you live a long, happy life where you don't remember anything about werewolves and getting bloodstains out of your clothes, if you could someday settle down with a woman who makes you happy and have a boring job. For a moment you're tempted, so tempted.

But then you clench your jaw and convince yourself that this is what you have been commanded to do and you'll do it.

God doesn't want you to be happy.

 

Happy people wouldn't hunt monsters.

 

Olivia Godfrey is a force to be reckoned with. By all accounts, she should be a washed up actress, making dramatic gestures and speaking with an accent cultivated to be fucking pretentious, her eyebrows following her brow line carefully, her cigarette curling smoke up into the stale air of the abandoned factory.

Even more than her son, her eyes are hypnotic.

You know to avoid them, you've learned it so many times; it has been drilled into your mind by teachers and priests and your brother. Don't look into her eyes. Don't look. Look anywhere, the floor, the ceiling, your shoes. Not her eyes. Don't fucking look into her fucking eyes.

You look.

 

She tells you to flay the skin off your body.

"Start there-" she points to your flat stomach "-and keep going up-" her nail traces up your chest, up to your neck "-and stop right at that place."

 _Sternum,_ you want to say. But you have no voice. Your shirt drops to the floor in a heap and you take the shard of glass, puncture into the dark tight flesh just above your hip, and drag to the side. Blood oozes over your skin, bubbling from the wound, running down and staining your jeans.

Is there pain? Do you feel pain?

You focus on letting your hands shake as you continue the incision up the center of your torso, over your belly button. The shard snags on the skin and rips vehemently. Unconcerned, you use both hands to peel at the flesh. There is resistance.

Olivia laughs.

Your muscles want to give out, but your eyes are still fixed on her and your fingers don't stop digging into the layer between skin and bone, slippery with blood. Your mind is trying to break free and fly, down like Icarus into oblivion. No, Icarus didn't fly. He fell, faint and feeble.

You fight the weakness, fight the desire to let go.

God wants you to be strong.


End file.
